What the world does not need is yet another PERL/CGI (sic) programmer
churning out yet another poorly designed shopping cart script. It is
obvious to me that from Sasquire's post that he does not understand
some of the important issues and will be doing his clients a disservice.

A shopping cart is not a simple thing. It definatly isn't something that
a beginning perl programmer should be attempting in any other context
than a learning one. There are some big issues at stake here:

Performance: How does the app scale? Can it handle peak loads?
Talking about '$15p/m' hosting worries me. You won't nearly have the
level of control you need.

Security: Is it something I can trust? How are credit card details stored?
Can something go wrong and they end up web accessible? What about
other customer data? Does the script make any of the obvious mistakes
like putting prices in hidden fields?

Stability: Is it going to be up 24x7? Is there any degree of
redundancy? Is there a plan for failure (ISP going under, hardware dying, etc)?
Are backups done? How secure are these?

Customization: How easy is it to respond to requirement changes?
Can the client modify templates? What happens when they want to add
features like cross selling? Is the tool powerful enough to handle changes?

For these reasons I would never recommend that a small client bases their
business on something written by a somebody who isn't an 'expert'. This
is why a platform such as Yahoo Store
is a win-win situation for somebody who doesn't want to spend a lot of money.